Legal Question in Legal Ethics in California

Hostile work environment and unethical resolutions.

Statue of limitations, I know it's one year from when incident happened. But this is a continuous problem at work. Our GM is very obnoxious and belittles his employees. He plays favoritism and does not like it when employees present their oppinions and ideas that are better then his. We have both Union and non-union employees. He has yelled and embarrassed several employees, including myself infront of other employees instead of behind closed doors. He nitpicks on certain employees to either make them quit or he fires them. Then there's the HR Supervisor, she does not follow thru with sexual harrassment complaints and when I approached her with my complaints, she threatened me by saying, ''that I should not go there'', (meaning I better not seek any legal help). Then there's my boss, I reported several sexual harrassment complaints on a specific person, he turns around and has a group meeting instead of talking to the individual employee. Obviously the company do not handle hostile complaints and sexual harrassment complaints seriously. I have been on dissability since 8/31/05 and have not been able to go back to work. I want to file some legal action, but don't know what. I am very depress and stressed out when I'm at work. Help???


Asked on 12/02/05, 3:07 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Robert F. Cohen Law Office of Robert F. Cohen

Re: Hostile work environment and unethical resolutions.

If the belittling runs to both genders, you have an obnoxious supervisor, and there's not much you can do about it. However, you believed that at least some of the conduct is sexual harassment. HR should immediately have conducted a reasonable investigation. So, the issues are: 1) was it sexual harassment; 2) did the company do a reasonable investigation; 3) what, if anything, was the outcome of the investigation. You have one year from the last incident to file a harassment complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. You should seek legal advice before filing it, however, because it could lock you into to certain things that you might regret later.

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Answered on 12/02/05, 8:20 pm


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